Three GENETICS articles from 2017 recognized with Editors’ Choice Awards

Author

Congratulations to the winners of the Editors’ Choice Awards for outstanding articles published in GENETICS in 2017! The journal’s Editorial Board considered a diverse range of articles, finding many papers worthy of recognition. After much deliberation, they settled on one exceptional article for each of the three award categories: molecular genetics, quantitative genetics, and population and evolutionary genetics. Check out some of the best GENETICS had to offer in 2017!

Butterfly wing patterns are a model system for studying the evolution and development of adaptive traits. Zhang et al. combine RNA-seq and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to characterize and functionally assess genes that are involved in butterfly wing pattern development. Focusing their approach on the melanin pigmentation pathway showed that, while some melanin genes have deeply conserved function across insects, some play expanded roles in butterfly wings to tune the coloration of specific pattern elements.

Inter-species interactions are common among plants, animals, and microbes. Existing analysis tools often focus on only one of the species involved in an interaction; to address this issue, Guo et al. developed an approach that concurrently identifies genes in both interacting partners. They apply this methodology to plants infected with a parasitic nematode and construct cross-species gene networks to identify cause-and-effect relationships between genes from both partners.

CRISPR/Cas9 gene drive (CGD) can spread a genetically modified allele to fixation within a species and is a promising tool for pest control. Unckless, Clark, and Messer examine the likelihood that resistance to gene drive will evolve prior to driver fixation, thus potentially limiting the ability of the driver to transform whole populations. Their results shed light on strategies for engineering drivers with lower potential for resistance and the possibility of using resistance as a mechanism for controlling CGD.